CCTV Reporter’s Arrest Causes a Stir

On Dec. 4, four policemen from Taiyuan city in Shanxi province traveled to Beijing to arrest a reporter from China Central Television (CCTV) in her apartment for alleged bribery after she investigated a case involving a local procuratorate (or prosecutor), Chinese media report. (English version here).

Last month, a reporter for CCTV’s channel on social and legal affairs, identified only by her surname, Li, went to Taiyuan together with two reporters from other media organizations in Beijing to look into the role played by the Xinghualing District People’s Procuratorate in an economic dispute between a businessman from Guangdong and a local businessman, according to state media reports. After the dispute emerged between the two parties, the Guangdong man found himself repeatedly arrested and jailed in Taiyuan on various charges. When the man was arrested for the fourth time last, his brother contacted Li. The Xinghualing prosecutors now allege that the brother bribed her with expensive gifts to persuade her to report on the case. Li’s report has yet to be broadcast.

Blessed with the official imprimatur of the government’s sole central broadcaster, CCTV’s investigative reports tend to have a major impact upon airing (a recent example involving Baidu here). Under standard newsroom practices, Li’s plans to investigate the Shanxi case would have been vetted by her editors in advance and the final report could have been spiked before airing.

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Li’s arrest has caused an angry outcry among China’s vocal netizens, who have started another “human flesh search engine” to dig out details about what they call “the strongest prosecutor in history”. A phone number for the Shanxi procuratorate office has been posted online, and some netizens called on people to dial the number till the telephone was broken.

The local prosecutor declined to comment, saying the case is under review, Xinhua reported. CCTV, meanwhile has already sent staff to Shanxi province to deal with the case. A CCTV spokesman said that the local procuratorate was not in a proper position to issue the warrant for Li’s arrest, according to the Beijing Youth Daily (in Chinese here).

Beijing lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, who is not directly involved in the case, said that the local procuratorate was overreaching its authority since the reporter just filed an investigative report against it. “Li’s bribery case involves the Xinghualing District Procuratorate. If they have jurisdiction over [Li's] case, can they act rationally, objectively, and impartially?” he wrote in his latest blog post.

In the original business dispute, the local prosecutor had already warned reporters not to interview any people involved in this alleged abuse of power. The two reporters who traveled with Li said they were forced to leave the city and threatened with revocation of their journalist licenses, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

Earlier this year, the party secretary of a city in northeast China’s Liaoning province dispatched police to Beijing to arrest a magazine journalist who had reported on a dispute between the local government and a businesswoman. The case caused great stir nationwide, and the local party secretary ended up issuing a public apology and resigning from his position.

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